Materials

Miniature Painting

Islamic miniature painting is generally understood to mean small paintings that are or once were part of a manuscript, used as a frontispiece or an illustration for a text. Drawings and individual paintings have, however, also been preserved. They were either sketches or were intended to be placed as independent works of art in an album.

The miniatures usually had a paper base, but cardboard and in rare cases cotton or silk cloth were also used. The brilliant colors are usually opaque.

The oldest preserved miniature paintings were made in around the year 1000, but not until around 1200 were they found in larger numbers. Islamic miniature painting is often categorized rather summarily into four regional schools: the Arab, the Persian, the Indian, and the Ottoman Turkish.

Miniature from a copy of Jafar al-Sadiq’s Falnama. “Idolaters Before an Idol”

Iran, Tabriz or Qasvin; c. 1550
Miniature: 57.7 × 43.8 cm

A Falnama is a kind of book of divination that can be consulted at random. Opposite each painting in an explanatory text. The text for the museum’s stylistically very unusual painting is found in the Los Angeles County Museum and explains that the scene is enacted in the “Azure monastery.” The omens associated with the miniature are highly inauspicious.

In around 1550, Shah Tahmasp developed a religious aversion to figurative painting, and it is likely that this manuscript was the last to be made in the shah’s studio, probably under the supervision of the painters Aqa Mirak and Abdul Aziz.